The Right Thing
by DrPraetorious
Summary: A few months after the events of the Bourne Ultimatum, Jason Bourne arrives for a scheduled rendezvous. Oneshot. The result of a fanfic prompt from the LJ community thebourneseries


The sights and smells of the marketplace sometimes seemed universal. Meat slow-roasting over an open flame, fresh fish, ripe fruits, and spices. The spices were always the most exciting scents because, perhaps more than any of the other elements, they defined the spectrum-the rainbow-of flavors that would eventually set a particular location or culture's cuisine apart from all the others.

As the man best known as Jason Bourne moved through the dense crowd in the Makola Market in Accra, Ghana, it occurred to him that he'd never really experienced a place like it before. Not limited to food items or even necessities, it seemed everything was up for barter among the collected throngs. Rows and rows of shops and stands offered wares as diverse as fried tongue or empty metal boxes of seemingly every dimension imaginable.

The sellers were eagerly selling, and the buyers enthusiastically buying. All were smiling. The collective positivity was… unfamiliar.

Wearing a nondescript button-up shirt of a neutral color and simple trousers with plenty of pockets, Jason looked like any other tourist brave enough to venture into the cacophonous labyrinth. In recent years, tourism had grown steadily in the country of Ghana—a fact that offered some comfort, despite the obvious differences between himself and the natives whose home he now visited.

Trouble had followed him practically nonstop, though, for the last few years. A moment's respite seemed almost too much to ask for.

Jason skirted close to a shop to avoid a procession of women carrying large bundles of goods on their heads. A group of children suddenly surrounded him and he slowed his pace, which had been fairly brisk and determined. He noticed for the first time the particularly inviting aroma that was wafting from the booth, matched only by the welcoming, innocent faces of the young crowd that had gathered about him. A quick glance showed him that the shop sold a dark soup containing what looked to be a mixture of crab, chicken, and perhaps a few other types of meat in among various vegetables.

"Sit!" one of the larger boys exclaimed happily. All together, the group of children erupted with similar cries.

"Eat!"

"The best soup in Accra!"

Small hands swamped him--some pushing, others tugging--leading him to a small, simple dining area already occupied by a handful of patrons who seemed intent on their soup and largely unphased by the spectacle that Jason was beginning to suspect had been repeated hundreds of times before as an arguably highly effective means of nabbing customers.

Despite himself, he felt a grin spread across his face, though it was marked with uneasiness.

"I can't," Bourne said. His protestations went ignored, though, as he was pushed deeper into the shop. Finally, pressed against a chair, he fell back onto the thinly cushioned seat. "Look," he said, directing his comments to the boy who had first spoken to him, "I'd love to stay and try your soup…"

Jason's words trailed off as he suddenly felt a pair of eyes boring into the back of his head. At the same time, some of the children's eyes flitted to something behind him and, if he read their expressions correctly, their faces lit with recognition.

Slowly, casually, Jason shifted his arm over the back of the chair. Between the crowds walking through the thoroughfare, past some hanging baskets, a woman with dark hair and a strikingly fair complexion stood out like a beacon. Though she wore large, black sunglasses, Bourne recognized Nicky Parsons immediately. He saw her and he knew she was watching him. Her expression didn't change, though, when their eyes met. In fact, for an instant, it seemed to Jason that she might just turn and walk the other way.

Finally, she stepped in his direction, and Jason turned his attention away from her and started scanning the shops for any faces that seemed to be watching Nicky or himself with anything more than bored curiosity. As it turned out, no one seemed to be paying them much attention at all.

As Nicky moved closer, though, a man in a camouflage uniform stepped around the corner, peeking through the wicker baskets and watching Nicky. Bourne looked away, focusing his eyes on a hen that had gotten loose and was running through the crowds. With his peripheral vision, though, he watched Nicky and the man who had been following her.

Three months had passed since Jason Bourne had last laid eyes on Nicky Parsons, and a lot of things had changed in the interim. He'd tracked down Albert Hirsch, the man who'd been there 'at the beginning.' The man who'd started his training as an operative for Treadstone. Jason had learned his real name: David Webb. Oddly enough, even with large chunks of his memory returning, including some parts of his life before Treadstone, the name still sounded foreign to him.

Nicky stopped a few feet short of the table, both hands resting on the strap of the large bag she carried over her right shoulder. The sunglasses made reading her expression difficult, but her body language said a lot about her… struggle.

"Sit down," Jason said, wondering to himself if she knew nothing about acting casually. "Not there," he added abruptly as she reached for a seat that would have put her directly in his line of sight to the Ghanaian man who was still watching her from his post.

"You came," Nicky said as she obediently dropped into another chair at the table Jason occupied. The children remained pressed around them, still smiling warmly. Most of them moved to welcome Nicky.

With the moment's distraction, Jason glanced in the direction of the man wearing camouflage. The greetings between Nicky and the young boys and girls confirmed what Jason had already suspected. They were familiar with her. The man, who Bourne guessed was in his early-twenties, had moved from behind the baskets. He was walking with conspicuous deliberateness, his eyes fixed on them.

Jason had hoped that any interest the young man might have had in Nicky would be dissuaded by her joining Jason's table. It seemed he was wrong.

"How long have you been here?" Bourne asked.

The smile on Nicky's face froze as she looked in Jason's direction. "What? I just got here. I mean…"

"The children. They know you. How long have you been in Accra?"

"Two… Almost two weeks," Nicky answered. Her brow furled behind the rim of her sunglasses. "I found a hotel, uh, Crystal Hostel. Well, I've actually been sleeping in a tent… I've been working," she added almost defensively.

Jason nodded and reminded himself that that was how she'd been trained to operate. Find a place to settle and build an alibi. Become a new person. Hide in plain sight. Jason, on the other hand, had been trained to disappear. If he performed his job correctly, when he left a town or a city, no one ever remembered him being there.

"You're being followed," he stated matter-of-factly.

"What?" Nicky said, clearly surprised. He saw her fight the urge to turn around and look.

"Native man in a policeman's uniform," he instructed. "Probably a thief." Jason's eyes flitted to the young man once again, observing the way his elbow was bent and his hand rested near his belt. He was hiding something under his shirt--something that he wanted to keep his hand close to. A gun.

"How…?" Nicky started to ask but stopped as Jason's eyes met hers.

"We're leaving," he said. He got up from the table and crossed behind her as she stood. He rested his hand on her back as any husband or boyfriend might and pushed in the direction away from their tail.

Their sudden decision to depart, however, did not sit well with the diner's younger occupants. Shouting a protest, they swarmed the pair, pushing them back towards the table.

"Not now!" Jason insisted.

"You!" a man's voice called out from behind them.

Bourne tightened his jaw and let out a slow breath. His eyes closed.

_No. I don't want to do this. Not here._

His eyes opened as he turned slowly, dropping his hand from Nicky's back and casually stepping in front of her. His face was expressionless.

"I need you two to come with me," the faux policeman said. He was nervous. Excited. A young criminal with a new toy who was all too eager to enjoy his easily obtained spoils.

"We don't want any trouble," Jason said in an even-toned, confident voice.

"Just come with me," the thief said, his hand pulling at the shirt tail that hid the gun stuck in his pants. Jason could practically feel the young man's compulsion to draw the weapon, to reveal his perceived superiority. But he kept it concealed, undoubtedly wanting to avoid a great deal of public attention.

"Fine," Jason said at last. "Where to?"

He turned to see Nicky staring at him through shaded lenses. He nodded slightly and nudged her forward. They exited the shop with the gunman sticking close behind them. The children stayed where they were, all too eager to see the perceived authority figure leaving without paying them any mind.

The small parade entered into the mingling crowd of marketers, moving unhurriedly to the outer reaches of the marketplace. Bourne stared straight ahead, jaw fixed, but he could _feel_ the man behind him. Nicky turned the corner to cut between two tents. Jason paused, carefully calculating the distance he needed between himself and the gunman, before stepping around the corner. The thief's inexperience proved his undoing, as he had been too far away to stop Jason from stepping out of view for an instant, and far too close to react quickly enough to spare himself the beating he was about to receive.

As the Ghanaian rounded the corner, Jason threw his forearm into the man's throat. Gurgling, he stumbled backwards, wide-eyed and grabbing for his throat. A quick punch across the jaw turned the thief's neck far enough to send him falling. Two more jabs to the face ensured he wouldn't be waking any time soon or seeing out of his right eye for a few days.

The whole thing had happened in the bat of an eye. One of the shopkeepers in the tent next to them let out a scream. Jason already had the Ghanaian flipped onto his stomach. Crouching over him, he snatched the gun from the man's waistband and slid it under his own.

Nicky had turned at the woman's alarm and Jason caught her eye. She had the same expression she'd worn when he'd busted into her Parisian safe house. She was scared. Of him. "Go," he said. "Walk twenty meters then lose the sunglasses and… buy something… I'll meet you at the nest."

She turned and walked briskly away from him, and Jason turned his attention back to the fallen assailant. Quick hands felt the unconscious man's pockets. He soon came up with a couple of passports, a white man and woman, and a wad of cash. The passports were useless if they'd been reported stolen. Somehow, he doubted the previous owners had received that opportunity. Deciding Nicky might be able to do something with them, Jason stuffed the goods into his pockets and looked up, searching in the direction she had left in. He saw her standing at a shop far down the row, tying a newly purchased scarf around her head.

Standing, he turned and walked in the opposite direction, shouldering past a few pedestrians who had stopped to stare, open-mouthed, at the fallen man in camouflage and the man who'd taken him down.

Six hours later, the sun was just about to set. The purple sky was becoming greyer by the second, casting long shadows over the manicured lawn littered with simple tents. He'd circled the Crystal Hostel three times now to make certain that nobody had followed Nicky or had staked out her tent. From all appearances, they'd made a clean getaway. It wasn't surprising. With the increase of tourism in Ghana, crime rates had followed suit, and the government and law enforcement were dragging their feet at catching up.

Still, as secure as Jason felt that they hadn't been blown, he found himself hesitant to approach Nicky's tent. Not for the first time, he felt like this had all been a bad idea, agreeing to meet up again. The truth of the matter was, the only reason he'd agreed to it at all was because he felt guilty. Nicky had thrown away her professional life and perhaps any future prospects of ever contacting whatever friends and family she might have had the instant she cooperated with him. It would have been a lot for him to have asked of a close friend. Too much.

So he'd agreed to meet her, if nothing else just so he could teach her the basics of running. Clearly, she wasn't completely inept, but then the CIA had been a little busy chasing Bourne and getting eaten up from the inside-out as their dirty dealings came to light. Once all of that was over, they could be certain that the agency would come looking. If he'd learned anything over the last few years, it was that the CIA had a long memory.

Rubbing the knuckles on his right hand with his thumb, Jason eyed the tents one last time. Then, raising from his huddled position, he made a bee-line for Nicky's tent. He threw back the burlap flap and saw Nicky jump as he stuck his head inside. She grabbed her chest with one hand even while the other slapped at the small table near the cot where the tent's solitary lamp sat along with a small pistol.

Jason frowned as he stepped into the tent and let the flap fall closed behind him. It was crazy to try and travel with a firearm and maybe even more dangerous for someone like her to try and buy one in Ghana. He didn't even want to think about what risks she'd taken to obtain the weapon. And for what? So she could be shot through the tent?

He moved straight to the lamp and turned the knob, cutting off the putting of gas and the whine of the luminescence. The tent fell into darkness and silence.

"It's not safe…" he said after a few awkward seconds. The silhouettes cast on the cloth would show anyone outside just exactly where they were in the tent at any given moment.

There was another silence, this one longer than the first. Jason stood in the blackness of the small tent as his eyes slowly adjusted and recalled the dimensions of the tent and the layout of the minimal furniture from the short glimpse he'd had.

"I was starting to think you'd changed your mind," Nicky said at last. "That you'd left."

"I almost did," Jason admitted finding a simple chair with an outstretched hand and turning to sit in it. He started pulling at the laces in his boots, eager to pull them from his hot, sweaty, and aching feet. Bending wasn't at all pleasant, as it pulled at the gunshot wound in his back, but Jason was used to pain.

"I didn't know he was following me," she said. "He must have spotted me in the market. I know he wasn't behind me when I left the tent…"

"I know."

He pulled the gun from the back of his pants and placed it on the ground next to his foot and proceeded to practice grabbing it a couple of times to make absolute sure he knew precisely where it was.

"I've been watching the fallout," Nicky continued in time. "If they didn't hate you before, they do now. All of them."

Jason couldn't argue with that or with what logic followed the reality. "We should be safe for a little while," he said though he wasn't exactly taking any chances.

"So… what are w—you going to do?"

The blue light of the moon peeked into the tent, and, finally, Jason's eyes were able to use it to see Nicky, still sitting on the bed, looking at him. He couldn't make out details, but he could feel her eyes on him and he knew the look on her face, could see it in his mind's eye as plainly as could be. It was always the same. She watched him like a lion-tamer-in-training working with a panther she didn't quite trust yet.

He could understand the fear in her eyes. It was her fascination that was really unsettling. Traveling to Africa, he'd had plenty of time to think about her words, implying that they'd… what? Had some kind of relationship? Even now, he had no recollection at all, no hint in his mind or heart, that they'd been intimate in any fashion.

He decided that, if they had… _known_ each other, it must have been very much one-sided. Imagining Nicky with an interest in a man as sick as he'd been, though-- It was difficult to accept.

"We run," Jason answered finally. "For now." At last, he was barefoot. He clasped his hands and rested his elbows on his knees, flexing his toes and letting fresh air flow between them for the first time in three days. "It gets…"

"… Gets easier," Nicky said, suddenly agitated. "Yeah, I remember you saying that. I'm still waiting on that."

That was because it was a lie. It never got any easier. The only time it had gotten easier was when he'd stopped running. When Marie had found a place she loved and he couldn't bring himself to uproot them yet again. And look what had happened…

"Why did you come back?" Nicky continued. "You said you almost didn't. What made you change your mind?"

Jason ran his hand over his short hair. "I'm just trying to do the right thing," he sighed. A heavy silence followed.

"Nobody does the right thing," Nicky said, crestfallen.

Bourne looked up sharply, meeting her gaze in the dark and remembering suddenly when Marie had said those exact words to him. At the time, he'd been put off by their negativity. He truly _had_ just been trying to help. The difference then had been that he honestly couldn't remember the life of pain he'd lived. He'd had no frame of reference to help him appreciate the wisdom that prompted her response. Knowing now about the man he'd been, the terrible things he'd done, being fully aware of the trail of collateral damage he left in his wake everywhere he went, the truth in Nicky's words was all too clear. This time, he simply bowed his head.


End file.
